


Crash and Burn (Young and Loaded)

by eyesonfire



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Drugs, F/M, M/M, Multi, Sex, the high life of the filthy rich
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-04
Updated: 2013-03-04
Packaged: 2017-12-04 06:58:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/707864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eyesonfire/pseuds/eyesonfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’re alone, and they are on fire. They don’t need anyone else, don’t want anyone else, hated and watched by the world, spinning out of control, falling from the sky in a flaming spiral, leaving people behind them choking on acid smoke. </p><p>Life is theirs for the taking, and they take it. </p><p> </p><p>Or the one where the boys are the heirs to millions, living the sordid life of the young and filthy rich.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crash and Burn (Young and Loaded)

**Author's Note:**

> so yeah.
> 
> i don't know what this is.
> 
> title: my chemical romance "na na na"

 

 

Lines of white lie on the table, straight, even, ready. Five boys glance at each other over the powder, smirking, and they bend their heads. The world dissolves into white and lights and blurred vision.

 

Bottles of straight stand starch in the cabinet; always full, always stocked. Five boys drink vodka for breakfast and gin for lunch and the world is a place of laughter and blurry eyes and no hangovers.

 

You can’t get a hangover if you never come down.

 

_Tick._

 

No worries, no cares, alcohol and parties, throwing money at issues and making them disappear; the life of the young and filthy rich.

 

_Tock._

 

Each day they wake up, late in the afternoon the day after a party, curing what hangover they have with a shot of gin, eating the breakfast cooked for them, and showering. The shower could rain down pure gold and it would make no difference anyway.

 

Life is fast cars and bright lights. Big city, big rush. Big shots; big names. They rub shoulders with the elite and they are the elitist. They are greased up to, sardonic smiles and cheesy lines and they’re sarcastically lovely back, laughter dancing in their eyes at the pathetic little men and women that pretend they didn’t hate their guts for a chance to go somewhere.

 

_Tick._

 

New month, new car. What's a few million quid on a Ferrari when your monthly child support is more than enough to comfortably float a starving country? Zayn hates his father but he loves the money he means, loves the influence his name stands for and loves the way his father crawls for him and begs and pays Zayn to hate him a little less.

 

Deep breaths. Dizzy head. It’s all drinking until they pass out, partying until five am, it’s leaving a warm bed before dawn, still high, just so he doesn’t have to look at her face in the cold light of day.

 

_Tock._

 

Life is fast and furious, no time to stop or calm or breathe, it’s fast money and quick fucks and big hits, raw nostrils and red eyes and blood tinted breath. It’s the speeding tickets they never pay; it’s shoplifting even though they have enough in their back pockets to buy the whole shop three times over. Life is never slowing down, never stopping and always blurred.

 

_Tick._

 

Louis wakes with the taste of Harry on his tongue and grins before rolling on top of him and lazily pushing in two fingers, waking him up and twenty minutes of screams and banging headboards later they sit at the kitchen table with unhidden smirks and unkept secrets.

 

Zayn wakes with a pounding head and vomit beside him and a bad feeling he'd forgotten a condom and he left the sleeping girl beside him with twenty thousand pounds and a note telling her to tell no one and to get rid of any issues that could appear, just in case.

 

Liam hasn't slept and morning finds him shaking in a corner, coming down from a crack high and his trembling fingers follow him until he takes a swig of the Bloody Mary at breakfast and the night before is a black blank cloud in his mind.

 

Niall has no idea where he is or who he’s with but he's laughing and they're giving him drinks and he's had a great night with them so he shrugs and cheers and licks tequila of someone's chest because time has no meaning and morning is just a time so why should they stop now?

 

_Tock._

None of them have ever worked a day in their life, most of them paid their way through exclusive schools, all of them have a pile of millions at their back and hundred pound notes beneath their feet.

 

Harry totals his Porsche and they laugh and toast it and tell Harry he’s a shit driver. It turns into a drag race and Louis takes Harry and Zayn takes Liam and Niall and they all take the highway, weaving and smoking and hanging out the windows, young and stupid and high and the cop is easily persuaded with a few rolls of notes that he'd seen nothing.

 

_Tick._

 

They get bored, they get high. They get tattoos, they buy gold watches. When cars and TVs and houses can't erase the empty feeling they all ignore they rock up to parties, buying rounds for everyone, hiring strippers, dancing on tables and doing coke in the bathrooms.

 

Life is a never ending party because there are no cares when you're so high that even clouds are below you.

 

_Tock._

They are the trashy tabloid covers that everyone loves to hate.

 

_Tick._

 

They get their hair done, masseuses on call twenty four seven, nail immaculate and hair perfect, chiselled faces and glorious bodies and they all know it. It’s an honour to sleep with one of them, it’s an honour to speak to them and it’s easy to party with them, dirty dancing on the floor, drinking and grinding and no one ever gets a number. They fuck and leave, set off the detonator and leave the party, light a table on fire and walk out with wads of hundreds left for the damage and the booze.

 

_Tock._

 

They know what they want and they take it, collars popped and heads high and leaving a trail of destruction in their wake.

 

They play Russian roulette and white powders are their bullets, play spin the bottle and they hold a bottle in each hand. They play games, keeping the boredom at bay by risking everything, obnoxious, loud, crazy. They block the loneliness out with random girls and each other; block the emptiness out with hard liquor and strange drugs.

 

They ignore the warning signs, neon, flashing, hard block letters and newspaper articles, burning the flimsy paper and watching their names in black print curling underneath the flames and the smoke and they use the flames to light the joints.

 

_Tick._

 

They ignore everything that they don’t want to hear, laugh in the faces of people that care, pushing everyone away that doesn't have something to offer them. They get bored again, and they drink themselves to darkness, get sick and drink themselves to health.

 

Needles in their skin, filled with ink or drugs, it doesn't matter, it chases away the numb while it stings, leaving behind a mark that remains after the high disappears.

 

_Tock._

 

They fuck bad thoughts away, fuck secrets and lies into a stranger’s body, leaving them there to rot and never calling again. They keep secrets from each other, from themselves and yet they all know everything about each other, every dirty little secret and everything they’ll never say out loud.

 

They are five boys, alienated, hated by the world and themselves, living on a rush, on a cloud, living on a prayer soaked in gin and cocaine, borrowing time and spending it on forgetting, paying it back with long nights and the smoke that floats from burning papers.

 

They'd found each other, lonely at surrounded by people at school, the sick, twisted, prestigious school that they paid or fucked their way through, recognising another soul just like their own, screaming for help and not really wanting it. They clutched hands, finding each other in this sick, sick world that was their oyster, never letting go through the rush of people and parties and lies and memories. They could do anything, anyone, and together they were slightly less alone and five times as fucked up and they took life as it came.

 

_Tick._

 

They all have issues, they all have their sensitive spots and they all know exactly where to prod to make another blow up, exactly where to press too hard to make someone’s eyes rage and their muscles tense and exactly what to say to calm them down and they are the only five that could calm another down.

 

They’re alone, and they are on fire. They don’t need anyone else, don’t want anyone else, hated and watched by the world, spinning out of control, falling from the sky in a flaming spiral, leaving people behind them choking on acid smoke.

 

Life is theirs for the taking, and they take it.

 

_Tock._

 

They grab what they want; steal what they don’t need, pay for things the fucking world thinks they should have. They live off their many millions, estranged parents buying their love, live off endorsements, companies paying them to hold a product and look into the camera and tell the impressionable sheep of the world that they should buy it and they could burn the camera with their gazes and make peoples ears fall off with the sickly sweet sarcasm they use.

 

They make it as uncomfortable as possible, swearing, laughing, making awkward demands to the people around them. They suck each other off in places where someone is guaranteed to walk in, biting deep and filthily and tonguing into another’s neck when the same person walks past just to fuck with them all, fuck with the whole world because they’re reckless as hell and bored and it’s all goddamn hilarious.

 

Life is a grand fucking party, a roller coaster on a perpetual high, the inevitable fall looming before them but they keep being pulled higher by the chains beneath them and the motor and the world and they smirk as they climb and snort powder of the belly of a stripper.

 

_Tick._

 

The millions would never run out, the fountains would never run dry and the gold mines would never be dug too far. A million here, a million there, buy a house and trash it. A new car, a new watch, a new hooker to make watch as they fuck each other instead. A new wardrobe, a new hair style and still the boredom creeps in. A new company, a new business, fifty thousand new shares. It makes them more money and the money makes them more bored.

 

They itch, insatiable, and irritable and yet they laugh and they drink and they throw empty bottles at the TV.

 

A new TV, a new couch, new bed for them to try out. Gold flecks in shampoo, and Harry thinks that at 16 he might never do anything more with his life and that the incurable boredom, the hunger for _more_ when they had everything would forever be there in his head and his hand clenches the bourbon bottle tighter like it’s to blame.

 

_Tock._

 

He fucks Louis, and Louis fucks him, he fucks a random girl who’s too hot and too wet and too close, too clingy and smells too sweet and giggles too much and screams too high and he wants to put a hand across her throat and squeeze and hold and shut her fucking up, just to stop the high squealing.

 

Zayn fucks Liam and Zayn fucks Niall and Liam fucks them both and Harry watches and watches the second hand on his shiny watch and time blurs until it’s another day and another night and they’re at another party. They’re in the bathroom with guys they've just met and they’re getting higher than the top of the skyscraper they’re in and Harry catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror, sixteen, lanky, curls and dimples and red-ringed green eyes and he wonders who that guy is and where he had come from and he turns away and snorts his hit before he can dwell on could-have-beens.

 

Liam is perhaps the most reserved of them and only two hits later, he’s the most sober of them and he has Zayn pinned against a wall and is attacking his neck and the guys they are with are looking curiously.

 

One of the guys gets handsy with Harry, and he asks him _what the fuck are you doing_ and Louis punches the guy in the face, a hand falling to Harry's ass possessively. The room is silent and Liam explodes into action, spins around and pulls Niall behind him and gets in between Louis and the guy. The guy has his hands up and is sarcastically apologising for making a pass at a homophobic asshole and Liam smacks him one and presses his lips to Harry's.

 

The bathroom spins and the skyscraper spins and the whole fucking world spins and the five of them find the guy’s face the funniest thing in the world and they leave the party a few thousand grand lighter for the guy’s drugs and their silence and they wander the cold streets and dance under streetlights and Harry pulls Louis off dancing on one like a whore and they laugh. And maybe their cold lips touch through the laugh but Harry isn’t entirely sure.

 

Harry feels more fulfilled than he has in a long time and maybe he’s just emotional because he’s coming down from his high but was still high enough for the stars in the sky to remind him of fireflies and he tells the boys he loves them. They call him a fucking idiot and ruffle his hair and Niall throws up in a gutter and ruins the moment and Harry laughs so hard he thinks his guts are going to explode all over the foot walk.

 

_Tick._

 

The next day they’re in the papers as homophobic dicks and Harry touches Zayn's back as he sweats over him, in him and comes up his stomach at the perfect fucking irony.

 

_Tock._

 

He fucks her angrily, angry at her screeching and her little self-satisfied smirk because _she got Harry fucking Styles_ and angry at the way she’s too soft and too curvy and too hot and all wrong and angry at the way she’s the only type he can fuck without the media going wild. Young, pretty, curvy, rich, though not as rich as him, and above all, female.

 

_Tick._

 

And it’s not that they give two shits about the media: they never have and they probably never will but their parents do and to their parents, drugs and alcohol and fucking random women is more acceptable than being _gay_ and so they’ll keep it up as long as they have to because none of them can pretend like they could live without the money.

 

_Tock._

 

She screams too loud, too high and he squeezes her throat slightly too hard and for slightly too long and he pants down at her limp body, finally silent and finally achieving his release and he thinks _fuck_. Because if he's killed her that’s probably one scandal too many and Harry doesn’t think he'd survive jail.

 

_Tick._

 

His mind is a blur of panic and thoughts and he desperately needs a hit, a shot, anything to calm his mind and clear the air and let him breathe for a moment and he knows he needs to get to the boys. They’re on speed dial on his phone, and they’re on speed but they get there quickly and calmly and they all stand around the bed, staring at the naked, unconscious girl spread out in the middle of it.

 

_Tock._

 

 _Right,_ Liam says and it’s clear he has no idea what the fuck he's doing.

 

 _Okay,_ and they all breathe a little calmer because even if he's freaking out just as much, Liam's in charge and they can always rely on him, because as sure as the stars are up and the bright white of the sky blinds them in the morning, Liam can take charge and talk the situation down and work out what to do.

 

Liam is the one who does this, the one who keeps his head even as he's higher than the fucking milky way, the only one who stays down on earth while the others spin with the stars and dance with Jupiter, the only one who knows what to do and can stop Niall from crying or Harry from freaking out or Zayn from shaking or Louis from overdosing. He's like a guardian angel, like a perfect human being that was somehow sent to protect them and stop them from doing stupid shit and he's amazing, perfect, and Harry wishes he could tell him all this but all he can do is think _fuck_ and beg Liam to _help._

Help is what Liam does, it’s his _thing,_ and he gets Zayn to calm Harry down while he figures out what to do and the last thing Harry sees before he's swept up in Zayn's warm arms is Liam's fingers dancing over the skin where a pulse should be throbbing in the neck of the girl.

 

Louis bites his nails until they bleed, scratches at invisible insects under his skin, secrets that boil his blood and crawl along his veins until they bleed out of his fingertips and spill in bloody piles on someone else’s white skin.

 

_Tick._

 

Niall cries in the corner and watches Liam frantically and swears and hunches away from demons that reach for him from the shadows that only he can see and only he can feel until Harry pulls him into the hug and he burrows his face into a warm neck and closes his eyes against the horrors.

 

_Tock._

 

Liam bites his lip and tries to stop his head from spinning long enough to figure out if there’s a pulse or not and then the girl takes a breath and he nearly sobs in relief.

 

They leave her a note, forging Harry's handwriting saying she must have had too much too drink and passed out and hopes the shame of passing out on Harry Styles will keep her mouth shut. If not, the few thousand pounds they left will give her an incentive to keep quiet and they know it will become just another rumour, a dirty secret that’s anything but secret about Harry Styles and his kinky sex life and it will be murmurs and whispers and sniggers and no one will know how close Harry came to murdering an innocent woman just because she was the bearer of society and his fucked up self.

 

They get high out of relief, stars hanging in the sky, close enough to touch and Louis promises close and hot and quiet in Harry's ear that he’ll catch one for him, pluck it out of the sky and keep it in his pocket, give it to Harry in a pretty box and they’ll lock it in a room with an X on the door and every time they open the door they’ll flood the whole world with light.

A shooting star comes close to smashing into the both of them and they weep with the beauty of the world and both wish on the star, pretty promises and empty words and Liam comes up behind them and hugs them both with his huge arms and it’s like being encircled by sunshine and summer.

 

_Tick._

 

Zayn sits near them and puffs out smoke that clouds the clear sky and tiny pearls of wisdom tumble out of his mouth and they fall and shatter on the cold floor in silence and the shards glitter like diamonds and glass and they can’t tell the difference.

 

Niall drinks his way through a month’s supply of booze and he eats his way through enough food to feed a family of four for forty fucking fortnights and he sobs, every so often in relief and puddles into their laps, chasing warmth and closeness and the taste of freedom.

 

The sounds Niall makes as Harry fucks into him are gorgeous, he thinks, lower and louder and softer and harder and perfect and Harry has no urge to surround his throat with his long fingers and _squeeze_ until he stops making noise, he wants to keep him making those sounds for fucking ever and he can, because they’re never going to die.

 

_Tock._

 

Forever is a long time and when you have nothing to do the time stretches long and straight in front of you and not even the most expensive Rolex can change the curse of too much time and nothing to do. 

 

_Tick._

 

Too much, take it back. Too much, stop. His tongue feels too heavy for his mouth, the world spinning below his head which is somehow on the ground. Harry wonders what rock bottom feels like when you're this fucking high up in the world.

 

They'd rather go to hell than be in purgatory because this world, this life is their purgatory and its waiting, its judgement and hell might be slightly more interesting.

 

_Tock._

 

The stars hang in the sky like diamonds on a black canvas and they wink at them like they know all their secrets and Harry thinks of how diamonds explode in light and sparkle in gold and glitter in even ready lines on the table.

 

They knew exactly what to say, charming smiles and flicking hair and they have conversations with people with judgements and they always walk away from the boys a little confused as to why they thought they were horrible people in the first place. They defy expectations, and live up to them exactly; a few million to a charity here, sponsorship there; fuck his wife in the back while he gives the thank you speech.

 

_Tick._

They don’t care about yesterday and don’t worry about tomorrow and it’s a dangerous line to walk, a tightrope balanced high above a pool of sharks and pills and reporters and death and so they get high and they dance across.

 

_Tock._

 

The crash slides closer and they’ve all learnt by now from the coke that the higher you are the harder you crash. They should be more worried, Harry thinks. But Harry thinks a lot of things, and somehow they all get lost in a maze of important thoughts in a hazy brain.

 

_Tick, tock._

And then Harry thinks that maybe they won’t crash and burn, because maybe they're not at the top after all. Maybe they're already at the bottom, being despised and spat on and they're not spiralling, they're lying in a gutter.

 

But then they walk into their mansion and people beg for their attention and yeah, they're still high and yeah, theyre still spiralling.

 

_Tick, tock._

They're all cocked guns, lit sticks of TNT, they're all an explosion a moment away.

 

_Tick, tock._

 

The world watches, and the world waits, because it’s seen it before and will see it again.

_Tick, tock,_ the world whispers.  _Tick, tock._

 

 


End file.
